Read Online The Highest Frontier by Joan Slonczewski - Free Book Online Page A

my stuff in the living room, but feel free to add yours. I screened for TPIs.” Toy-print infections. “Did you miss the powwow? The president dropped in on a parachute—he’s chulo .” Talking to Mary was easy, she realized. She picked up right away that this Mary was a lot more challenged than herself.
    “We missed the powwow. We were delayed.” Mary lifted the water bottle and took a long swallow. “The vote was close.”
    Jenny blinked. “The what?”
    “Twenty-one to twenty-two. It took a long time.”
    “I see.” Autism, Dean Kwon had said. Maybe this was one of those incomprehensible jokes.
    “We avoid crowds. Someone might notice we’re … not like them.”
    “Sure, I understand,” said Jenny. “That’s why my dad avoids cocktail parties. So, you’re from Long Beach?”
    “We came ashore there.”
    “Your parents still live there? What do they do?”
    “We don’t have parents.”
    “Sorry.” Jenny bit her lip, remembering.
    “We’re sorry,” Mary said. “We’re really sorry about all the poisoned fish.”
    “Did your fish not make it through?”
    “Poisoned by ultra.”
    “Oh,” Jenny sighed. “Ultraphytes make cyanide—but only when stressed.” That poor squirrel back in Somers. “Ultras can be beautiful. Like poison frogs.” She recalled the yellow ultraphyte huddled in her basement, her project for the science fair. And now they were morphing into new forms; if only she could learn more. “Well, I know how you feel. I raise plants—but the quarantine took them.”
    “We raise plants.”
    “You do? Aquarium plants?”
    Mary’s luminous eyes widened. “Humans make poisons too. And humans are beautiful.” She held up her water bottle and swallowed again. Then she offered Jenny something in her hand. “Will you be our friend?” Some kind of round white pills or candies.
    “Uh, no thanks.”
    “They’re…” Mary searched for a word. “‘Genuine.’”
    Jenny looked again, and took one of the round pills between her fingers. It gleamed translucent in the porch light. A pearl. She peered closer at Mary’s face: smooth as a pearl, without pores. “Prosthetic,” suggested her toysearch. Prosthetic graft, perhaps for ectodermal dysplasia. Qué lío, what a mess this chica must be. “That’s okay, Mary,” she said kindly. “We’ll be friends.”

6
    As soon as she got back to her room, Jenny printed out new clothes, a shirt of fashionable lime green with a loose, draping neckline, and a pair of black pants with a tiny moonhole on each seat. Next, smart black shoes with meter-long lime-green laces. Then she set her toybox to erase the moonholes, and the laces, for all public transmission. In her toybox, her parents’ two windows were closed, her father’s named Iroquoia. She sighed; with all her studies, she doubted she’d have much time for toyworlds.
    Anouk’s window opened. “ Écoute, Jenny; where are we going for supper?”
    Jenny blinked. “The dining hall.”
    The parisienne looked disappointed. “The campus has several nice cafés. Never mind, chérie —see you at the dining hall.”
    She looked around for Mary. A tentative knock on the bedroom door produced no response, and no window opened in her box. With a shrug, Jenny left.
    *   *   *
    The dining hall looked like a draft printout, with long plain tables and benches in between. Returning students exclaimed at each other, windows winking and toyworld invites flashing. “Vivian Hatley, Hostess, Begonia Club.” A stylish chica with a Newman chin and Monroe lips caught Jenny’s hand. “Call me Viv, dear. I’m so glad we caught up at last. Those orchids of yours—stunning.” At Viv’s shoulder perched a creamy begonia with a yellow center and a leaf with an interestingly asymmetric heart shape. Viv’s window popped an invite to the Begonia Club Reception, Sunday afternoon.
    Anouk, the Parisian math genius, was already seated next to Reesie, the slanball twin from the shuttle. Anouk